The Rodina party has filed an administrative lawsuit with Russia's Supreme Court demanding that the registration of the Yabloko party's federal list for the State Duma elections be annulled. Rodina leader Alexei Zhuravlev called his opponents "national traitors" working for the West and said the lawsuit mainly concerns financial violations. Earlier, he accused Yabloko of using foreign funding, suggesting that Mikhail Khodorkovsky was behind it. Yabloko called Zhuravlev's statements slanderous and promised to file a counterclaim for the protection of business reputation.
A copy of the lawsuit was obtained by TASS. The document claims that Yabloko's campaign spending significantly exceeded the limits of its electoral fund, that some materials supporting the party were distributed by "foreign agents," and that payments were made through foreign social networks not from the electoral fund. The lawsuit also points to "extremist" activities by the party and violations of legislation at the nomination and registration stages. Rodina noted that 218 of the 269 candidates on Yabloko's list had notifications about the absence of foreign accounts and assets dated June 20–26, although the party's pre-election congress took place on June 27–28. According to the plaintiffs, this is a significant violation of the law.
The Supreme Court will consider the lawsuit on August 10. Under the law "On the Election of State Duma Deputies," only the Supreme Court can annul the registration of a federal list. A request to annul registration can be filed no later than eight days before the first day of voting, that is, before September 10. The court is obliged to consider the case before September 13. The deputy chairman of the Rodina party and other competitors of Yabloko can file similar lawsuits until September 10.
On August 6, Yulia Navalnaya, Ilya Yashin, Vladimir Kara-Murza, Lyubov Sobol, Andrei Pivovarov, and other opposition politicians called for voting for Yabloko on party lists. After that, LDPR leader Leonid Slutsky said that Yabloko should be recognized as an "undesirable organization." Yabloko chairman Nikolai Rybakov responded that the party has no connection with the opposition figures who supported it.
If Yabloko's registration is annulled after ballots have already been printed, election commission staff will manually cross out the party from ballots on the instructions of the Central Election Commission.